


Fairytale Ending

by MariusAngelicaSue



Series: Writing Prompts [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Obvious references to Grimm's Fairytales, Writing Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 10:43:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12034248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MariusAngelicaSue/pseuds/MariusAngelicaSue
Summary: Have your story begin with "The End",And end with "Once Upon a Time".





	Fairytale Ending

The end of their world happened in the way everyone had feared. 

Falada never thought she deserved to have survived through it, nor did she find herself grateful that she did. She stared at the empty landscape ahead of her, like a blank canvas that didn’t have an artist to fill its space. The previous few days of walking all had similar views.

Any memories of what happened before the attacks were blurred, having bled into each other with just repetitive motions of survival, fear, and desperation. Everyone had been so stubborn the whole way through, even as each punch got stronger with no sign of stopping. Falada wished someone important could have been smart enough to leave with their tail between their legs; hell, she wished she did that, and perhaps have avoided this future. 

With the days being so monotonous, Falada could only remember small, quirky memories of specific thoughts during the war. She remembered staring out the window one time, seeing the flies buzzing around the flowers, and wishing that one of them could spy on the enemy, listen to all their plans and bring them back to her. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel so hopeless. 

She could also remember the pet frog that she had during the war, the one source of comfort whenever things got stressful, which was quite often. Sometimes for fun, she’d let him sit at her table while she was eating dinner, although she was quickly told to stop it. Still, she remembered how his terrarium sat next her bed, and how sometimes she’d wake up with him on one of her pillows. 

She could also remember the one morning when he quietly left her, vanishing from the terrarium, leaving only a damp spot on her pillow and a crushing feeling of loneliness. 

~~~

Falada never knew how she had managed to get into the higher intelligence during the war; whether she had truly impressed them or they were just desperate, she never bothered to find out. Her journey to gain that position had felt like climbing a tower seventy feet high, with people trying to drag her down by her hair the whole way. She would always meet men that were shorter and angrier than she was, like grumpy little gnomes never willing to admit that she was useful or helpful to them in some way unless she could spin straw into gold. She always hated how little power she had always had among them, that feeling of helplessness. She always hated being at the mercy of another. 

Likely her worst moment of when that happened during the war was when she was heading home one night. She had been passing through a park when she remembered encountering the man. There were many threats to her life leading up to that night as she had climbed in power and popularity, but she had often tried to brush them off. They always seemed over the top, with talks of cutting out her lungs and liver, or her heart. Those images never became frightening until she saw that man in the dark approach her, a gun in one hand and a meat knife in the other. 

Falada always felt disgust whenever she thought back to that memory, of how much she begged and cried, how it worked, gave him enough pause to allow her to escape. Many nights after that she feared she would wake up to him above her, after somehow tracking her down in the moonlight. Later, when she told of what happened to her, guards would be dispatched to protect her from any future assassination attempts. By the time the war ended, seven in total had been assigned to watch over her. 

~~~

There were very few times in which she felt genuine hope for the outcome of the war. However, she had to admit that she had felt a small sparkle when they had received the new airships. There were only twelve of them, and they had been very costly, but their firepower was unmatched by any previous models of both ally and enemy, and with their country’s greatest pilots in their cockpits they were a force to be reckoned with. 

Her friend, Paddock, was among these pilots, with the honor to fly the airship named the Youth. She remembered watching him flying along with the other pilots, like Elder and Silver, how they almost looked like they were dancing. She remembered that feeling of hope she had in her chest as she waved goodbye to them. 

The Youth was the first of the twelve planes to be destroyed, after only going on three missions before being shot down. He was just another poor soldier in the long war, but without him Falada felt lost, wandering with no direction. 

~~~

She now knew the dangers, the uselessness, of hope. Yet even after the war, it still manifested in her as she walked through the barren after effects of the war. Every time she reminisced, thought of what she should have done differently, she was feeling hope that the past could have somehow been changed. But it was a stupid thought to exercise; she already knew that everything had already happened, and nothing now or before could have have changed it. There was no violinist to sweep her off her feet, no reward for the good and innocent, no easily removable curse, no happily ever after. 

Any curse that Falada had couldn’t be dismissed with killing the right man, or kissing the right man, or outsmarting both of them. Only now, when there was nothing left, when there was nobody left, was the curse pointless. Now, all she could do was imagine herself in her past memories, asking herself how long ago she had been happy. 

She was happy, back when she was just a little girl.

She was happy, before the war. 

She was happy, sometime in the past. 

She was happy, once upon a time.


End file.
